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squire
Half-elven
Feb 22 2016, 5:56am
Post #1 of 20
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**The Stairs of Cirith Ungol** 1. Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay...
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Welcome to this week’s chapter of the Reading Room’s sixth exploration of The Lord of the Rings! I will be leading us in a close reading of Chapter 8 in Book IV: “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol.” I’ve prepared five posts to get us to Friday, working through the narrative, and I will try to limit my questions a bit, so as not to overwhelm folks. However – as always – that does not mean you are not welcome to ask new questions yourself, or to explore offshoots of my ideas! Sometimes the best discussions happen when the leader is hijacked, gagged, and stuffed in a box, and the whole thing goes off the rails. So, on with the show….
Summary of today’s section
As soon as the darkness falls on the Crossroads, Gollum urges the hobbits to follow him up the eastern road. They enter the Morgul Vale and see the city of the Ringwraiths. It is described as a walled city dominated by a tower; although the valley is dark, the city’s walls glow with an unearthly light. This is said to have been captured moonlight when Gondor built it, but now the light is pulsing and eerie, “like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light”. The windows are black holes, and the top of the tower turns back and forth like “a huge ghostly head leering into the night”.
Horrified, the three travelers follow the road as far as the bridge; they are sickened by the smell of the rotting fields and oppressed by the deadly mist of the stream. Frodo is drawn towards the bridge like a zombie, and Sam and Gollum can barely restrain him; he feels the Ring pulling him on. Gollum leads them to a path off the road that climbs up the northern side of the valley. As they ascend in the darkness, the spell of the valley gradually fades, but the hobbits find they are exhausted. At the top of a barren outcrop, seeing the path winding across the southern face of the mountain above, they pause despite Gollum’s desperate warnings to get out of sight of the ghostly city.
Some questions
A. Is Minas Morgul a city or a fortress?
B. How and when did the changes in its appearance come about?
At this point in the story, you may remember from your first reading, we have not yet visited the extremely well described fortified city of Minas Tirith. Then, of course, we never return to Minas Morgul again. Yet numerous times in the text we are told that they are ‘twin’ cities, representing the two noble houses and lands of Isildur and Anarion at their founding, and the two rival powers at the end of the Third Age, Mordor and Gondor.
C. How effective is this ‘pairing’ in driving the story along, or in developing some of the tale’s themes?
Can you compare the two cities in terms of their:
D. Setting (physical location, strategic purpose)?
E. Economics (fundamental means of supporting a large, concentrated, urban population)?
F. Architecture (structures, layout, military value, construction materials, style)?
G. Symbolism (underlying meanings or messages, both story-internal and story-external)?
One thing I’ve always noticed about this passage, is that there seems to be a different kind of horror associated with Morgul, relative to its parent land, Mordor. In Morgul we are confronted with the idea of ‘living death’; in Mordor we experience what I think of as ‘spiritual death’, or total oblivion. Here are some of the images I note whenever I read this part of the chapter: decay, living death, corpse-light (whatever that is), phosphorescence, inner darkness, mouth, eyes, luminous, demented, sickening charnel-smell, rottenness. This is not the vocabulary we will encounter in the Morder chapters of Book VI.
H. Please comment if you agree, or disagree.
Some pictures
  
1. Heavy metal band Succession album cover 2. Roger Garland 3. David Findlay
  
4. New Line films concept sketch 5. Ted Nasmith 6. Shin500
I. OK, I gotta ask this: How come no artist wants to touch the rotating Death’s Head Restaurant at the top of the tower?
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Feb 22 2016, 7:17am
Post #2 of 20
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Did the walls of Minas Anor formerly glimmer with captured sunlight?
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There's one missing opposition. Sure, Pippin gasps when he sees the tower of Minas Tirith reflecting sunlight in the morning, but there is no suggestion that the city glows yellow, orange, or red at night. Did it once? Was it changed when Gondor fortified it and moved the capital there from Osgiliath?
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Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
Feb 22 2016, 10:28am
Post #3 of 20
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You obviously mean to work us hard this week, Squire, not much sleep for us!
Anyway, yes I think you are right, there are two kinds of horror at work here, more traditional Sauron/Orkish horror in Mordor, but nasty as these creatures are, at least they are alive! Here, it seems that there is an undead variety to this horror, one of the Nazguls's own making. We have seen that even his own people are terrified of the Nazgul. Also this is Nazgul power at maximum scale, on there home turf as it where, not far away in the Shire, or even attacking MInas Tirith. A different matter!
Undead feature sometimes in Tolkien. The other main example I can think of is, of course, the Dead men of the paths of the Dead. They seem to have similar effects, though in the other case, the people of the West where able to use them. Which gives me a thought. If someone gave the Nazgul an opportunity to die properly and vanish from the world, would they take it? Life is not pleasant as a Nazgul after all, I wonder if they had similar opinions as those in the paths of the Dead.
Looking at those pictures, one thing strikes me is that city would be easy to take if someone controlled the mountains above and hurled ballistics down upon it. I wonder if that is what happened.
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oliphaunt
Lorien
Feb 22 2016, 1:17pm
Post #4 of 20
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Some answers:
A. Is Minas Morgul a city or a fortress?
I always thought that Minas Morgul started out like Minas Tirith, but didn't grow as large. Since Minas Tirith is a fortified city, Minas Morgul is a small fortified city. Considering the size of the army that marches out, it's got to have some square footage.
B. How and when did the changes in its appearance come about?
During habitation by the un-dead, who have created an environment that supports the unbridled growth of bioluminescent fungi, beetles and millipedes. Interestingly, bioluminescence is a property of life, not of death. The organisms that luminesce are alive, but they can feed on dead matter and waste products, like bat guano.
C. How effective is this ‘pairing’ in driving the story along, or in developing some of the tale’s themes?
Minas Tirith is beginning to decay, with empty lifeless buildings. Minas Morgul is in much worse shape. But the Numenorean cities are both in decline. This began with the physical decline of the royal families, which accompanied their moral decline and refusal to accept death with hope. As they strove to extend their lives, they lost their vitality (and virility, as they didn't produce heirs). Minas Tirith is on it's way to becoming just like Minas Morgul. Changing the course of this decay is going to require a major moral overhaul by a royal leader willing to accept the gift of death with hope.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Feb 22 2016, 2:09pm
Post #5 of 20
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Minas Morgul - what's THAT doing there?!
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The description of Minas Morgul doesn't remind me of a city or a fortress as much as something more mechanical. It would fit nicely into some early Science Fiction story: the aliens have landed and here is their eerily-glowing ship, with that strange rotating turret.
What's it doing there (apart from being wonderfully creepy) ? Cities tend to be located for some commercial reason - a port, a river crossing: goods or people moving to and fro. Fortresses (at least in Medieval Europe) tended to have some strategic role - defend the road or pass or ford. The nearest strategic and commercial thing I can see to Minas Ithil/Morgul is the crossroads. It's a crossroads now because it includes a route to Mians Ithil, but it would in any case be where traffic or invaders turned off the North-South road for Osgiliath. But it's only maybe 20-30 miles from Osgiliath, so maybe the Osgiliath garrison should be covering it?
The commercial and strategic things don't apply if this was a Royal Castle based at first on Isildur's country retreat. A few English castles or German Schloss started out like that. A grand Prince required a sufficient guard, retinue and court that quite a substantial place could build up.
~~~~~~
volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A wonderful list of links to previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Feb 22 2016, 2:15pm
Post #6 of 20
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Doesn't exactly command the high ground does it?
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Presumably forts such as the one Sam and Frodo encounter up top were intended to stop anyone establishing themselves on the mountains above Minas Ithil and dropping stuff in (unless the ground is so rough that this would be impractical anyway?)
Maybe the stairs of Cirith Ungool are the old way between the city and the fort for emergency messengers. Having no way for any substantial forces to get down is nice to prevent a sneak attack on Ithil over the mountains. But it must have been pretty inconvenient.
~~~~~~
volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A wonderful list of links to previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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enanito
Rohan
Feb 22 2016, 3:22pm
Post #7 of 20
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Please, no swimming in the river
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J. How far downriver do effects of Mogul stream remain?
I'd like some insight into any Tolkien words on this, or just people's thoughts. Obviously you don't want to fill your water bottles in the stream under the bridge in front of Minas Morgul. And they had been warned not to drink any water in Ithilien that issued from that Vale.
So how far exactly would this effect remain? If I'm at the union of the Mogul stream with the mighty Anduin, is the water 'poisonous' right before the confluence but drinkable once it enters the great river?
I've always wondered this as well about the Enchanted River in Mirkwood, that joins with the Forest River.
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enanito
Rohan
Feb 22 2016, 3:35pm
Post #8 of 20
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Originally an outpost for watching Mordor?
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I thought Minas Ithil was intended as a fortress on the outskirts of Mordor, to keep watch over any growth in Sauron's power? In that case its location is fine, being on the very edge of Gondor, with its bulk inside the (originally) good land and only the tip of the tower able to rotate between looking into Mordor and then back towards Osgiliath and Minas Arnor.
Granted, if you really are intent on preventing any rebuilding of evil, using the mountains as a shield and only peeking your head over the tips to glance into Mordor, isn't necessarily the best way -- you gotta get your hands dirty and place your strength inside your enemy's territory (boots on the ground, as it were). Maybe they thought the Palantiri would be sufficient to see into the darkness of Mordor?
To me in a way it might be indicative that even when Minas Ithil was built, the people of Gondor weren't fully committed to maintaining an eternally vigilant watch over Mordor, which we then see played out in the lapse of the Watchful Peace.
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No One in Particular
Lorien
Feb 22 2016, 3:51pm
Post #9 of 20
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Whether the Numenorians built the two stairs, or whether they were already there, either way that spot seems to be a pass over the Ephel Duath. I have always assumed that Minas Ithil was placed there because it was a way into or out of Mordor, stairs notwithstanding.
While you live, shine
Have no grief at all
Life exists only for a short while
And time demands an end.
Seikilos Epitaph
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sador
Half-elven
Feb 22 2016, 6:59pm
Post #10 of 20
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It seemed to Legolas, as he strained his farseeing eyes, that he caught a glint of white: far away perchance the sun twinkled on a pinnacle of the Tower of Guard. - The King of the Golden Hall
However, this is admittedly weak; and in the Palantir, Gandalf says to Pippin:
...And in two days thence you shall see the purple shadow of Mount Mindolluin and the walls of the tower of Denethor white in the morning.
Also, had captured sunlight been a feature of Minas Anor, I would have expected it to be mentioned in the paean to Aragorn's reign in The Steward and the King, when the return to its days of glory is described.
I must admit that until reading this time around, I have always assumed the light of Minas Morgul was a kind of corpse-light, at the most recalling Boromir's words regarding the "dark shadow under the moon".
Perhaps even "Not the imprisoned moonlight welling through the marble walls of Minas Ithil long ago" should be read just as negating Frodo's wishful thinking - like his first thought of Gondor's soldiers when he sees the the Easterlings coming to the Black Gate.
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enanito
Rohan
Feb 22 2016, 8:34pm
Post #11 of 20
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Correcting myself... forgot about Tower of Cirith Ungol
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I continually seem to mentally merge Minas Morgul with the Tower of Cirith Ungol. I think that during my first readings I didn't catch the fact that the tower where Frodo is held is different than the citadel of Minas Ithil, and I keep mixing it up to this day. Sharing your confusion with the world on public forums is a wonderful thing 
So... my earlier statement about the importance of placing a fortress of strength inside Mordor appears to be exactly what the Gondoreans did with the Tower of Cirith Ungol, right?
And if that's the case, then Minas Morgul (Ithil) might not serve a direct military purpose, being on the "safe" side of the mountain and protected by the garrisons inside Cirith Ungol.
I'm not sure Cirith Ungol applies to Squire's questions about Minas Morgul. Does the existence of one somehow affect the function of the other? For instance, might Minas Morgul be less heavily fortified, since it has Cirith Ungol defending its rear, and unlike Minas Tirith maybe is less likely to suffer a frontal attack?
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No One in Particular
Lorien
Feb 22 2016, 8:40pm
Post #12 of 20
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Also to consider was Shelob. I don't remember ever seeing anything in the Tale of Years about when she took up residence in Cirith Ungol, but she's obviously been there for a while. Perhaps the placement of Minas Ithil had something to do with preventing Shelob from going for a walk and getting up to hijinx.
Of course, if there is anything in the text that states Ithil was there before Shelob moved in, please feel free to disregard this notion as absurd. :)
While you live, shine
Have no grief at all
Life exists only for a short while
And time demands an end.
Seikilos Epitaph
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squire
Half-elven
Feb 23 2016, 2:32am
Post #13 of 20
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Yes, I've always been intrigued by that detail
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As we know from his drafts and notes, Tolkien was very set on linking the land of Ithilien to the influence of the moon, in both its benign and malign forms. Here he magically (quite literally magically) turns the good into the bad.
We are told that Minas Ithil glowed with a kind of quasi-Elvish beauty. However it might be imagined, it seems that moonlight could be 'captured' within marble by the Numenoreans' art. It works for me, because marble is known for its translucent qualities.
Now with the hobbits we see that Minas Morgul, the city's evil incarnation, has taken the same faint, pale, cool white light and turned it into the phosphorescence of decay. I couldn't find any exact reference to what "corpse-light" was, but I think the idea refers to the fact that corpses (in Europe) are white from being drained of blood. I'm guessing the white flesh may well have appeared to 'glow' in moonlight at night on what would otherwise be a darkened and dirty battlefield, or perhaps in a darkened house of mourning. Likewise the impression of pulsating intensity evokes the rhythm of breathing -- a breathing corpse, in other words. That is one definition of the living dead, which is the central theme of the entire Morgul Vale and its lords, the Nazgul. The corpse imagery is taken further with the personification of the city in the descriptions that follow: the windows are described as dead eye holes, the gate as a grinning mouth, and the tower top as a turning head.
Well, does this intense imagery, from the enmarbled moonlight to the ghostly corpse under moonlight, find any echo in what we learn about Minas Anor, later Minas Tirith? I would say no, on a number of counts. To start with, as several have already pointed out, there is almost no "sun" imagery built into the physical structure of the White City. Yes, the sunlight reflects beautifully off the walls and towers when Gandalf and Pippin arrive at dawn, but there is no hint that this is or was the primary goal of the city's builders. At one point, I think, the sun is even evoked as being of the realm of the Haradrim, Gondor's enemy's (something about the "sunlands"??).
Second, Anorien gets very short shrift as a "land" comparable to Ithilien. Sure, we get the description of the Pelennor Fields, but they are just the counterpart of the deadly 'meads' that surround Minas Morgul. However, Anorien is the whole province that goes from Lebennin all the way to the Rohan border, and although both Gandalf and the Rohirrim ride through it, there is nothing like the intense and sensitive focus on the landscape that we see here in Book IV. By the time we get to Book V. Minas Tirith is not the opposite twin to Minas Morgul, but to the Barad-dur. In other words, Book V is about Minas Tirith as the capital of its kingdom, not the feudal castle of the province of Anorien. The White City of Gondor is opposed to the Dark Tower of Mordor, not to the ghost city of the Morgul Vale.
Finally, this is probably less consequential, but there is the odd contrast between the two main city walls. Minas Morgul/Ithil's is made of marble, and glows with a heavenly/ghostly light at night. But frankly, my dear, marble is a terrible stone to make a fortified wall with: it's very crystalline and prone to fracture under assault. On the other side of the River, we find that Minas Anor/Tirith's outer wall is made of the same impenetrable, indomitable stone as the tower of Orthanc: black, solid, and totally absorbent of light, whether moonlight or sunlight. The contrast couldn't be greater, and it's the opposite of twinning; it's as if the cities occupy two different imaginative spaces. One is symbolic of an incomplete and partially developed theme about moon vs. sun; the other is redeveloped entirely to suit it for its wartime role as the defender in "The Siege of Gondor".
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd & 4th TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion and NOW the 1st BotR Discussion too! and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Feb 23 2016, 5:08pm
Post #15 of 20
(2331 views)
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Next chapter implies it was 6,000 years ago. //
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enanito
Rohan
Feb 23 2016, 8:53pm
Post #16 of 20
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Maybe next week's chapter leader...
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... will take up this topic 
I actually do plan on having that be a discussion point, building a stairway and tunnel right thru downtown Shelob-ville. Feel free to opine in this thread, but I'll make sure we cover it again next week!
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Feb 24 2016, 1:41pm
Post #17 of 20
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a different kind of horror associated with Morgul, relative to its parent land, Mordor
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One thing I’ve always noticed about this passage, is that there seems to be a different kind of horror associated with Morgul, relative to its parent land, Mordor. In Morgul we are confronted with the idea of ‘living death’; in Mordor we experience what I think of as ‘spiritual death’, or total oblivion. Here are some of the images I note whenever I read this part of the chapter: decay, living death, corpse-light (whatever that is), phosphorescence, inner darkness, mouth, eyes, luminous, demented, sickening charnel-smell, rottenness. This is not the vocabulary we will encounter in the Morder chapters of Book VI.
H. Please comment if you agree, or disagree.
I very much agree - thanks for this insightful observation!
~~~~~~
volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A wonderful list of links to previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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hanne
Lorien
Feb 24 2016, 1:57pm
Post #18 of 20
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That’s a really interesting question
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The only thing I can think of that Tolkien wrote that might hint at his thinking is from the Silmarillion. Ulmo the Vala of water is described as not often taking a body like the other Valar, but living as a sort of diffuse consciousness throughout all the streams and rivers of the world, as well as in the ocean. People could have prophetic dreams by sleeping by water where Ulmo would give them a message. And his power was said to be particularly strong in Sirion, the great river of Beleriand.
When the Elves were badly losing against Morgoth the original dark lord, and the curse on them was about to be fulfilled, Ulmo sent a message to Finrod, one of the kings of the elves, which said, in part: “The Evil of the North has defiled the springs of Sirion, and my power withdraws from the fingers of the flowing waters.”
That’s not much to hinge speculation on but why should that stop us :) Anyway, here I go: I could imagine that Ulmo’s power was in Anduin (and so able to clean it of evil) but that Ulmo had withdrawn from the finger of the Morgul stream because he had no more hope of doing any good there.
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Darkstone
Immortal
Feb 26 2016, 7:03pm
Post #19 of 20
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Good fortresses make good neighbors.
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Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down. I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
-Robert Frost, Mending Wall
A. Is Minas Morgul a city or a fortress?
In ancient days a city had walls, so it was a fortress. Interestingly one exception was ancient Rome (another was Sparta) which had no defensive walls but depended upon its military to protect it. Eventually they decided they needed walls.
On the other hand fortresses often became cities as civilians gathered around them to provide goods and services, not to mention for protection.
Curiously, due to the Roman army’s custom of surrounding their temporary camps with pretty good defensive works, when the army moved on often the native population would move into the fortified area and found a town.
So I guess the answer is “yes”.
B. How and when did the changes in its appearance come about?
I’m thinking when the Art Bleccho movement became all the rage in the 2020s, 30s and 40s. Unfortunately, once such an architectural craze goes out of style you’re stucco with it.
At this point in the story, you may remember from your first reading, we have not yet visited the extremely well described fortified city of Minas Tirith. Then, of course, we never return to Minas Morgul again.
Kinda like St. Paul to Minneapolis. Or Bradford to Leeds.
Yet numerous times in the text we are told that they are ‘twin’ cities, representing the two noble houses and lands of Isildur and Anarion at their founding, and the two rival powers at the end of the Third Age, Mordor and Gondor.
C. How effective is this ‘pairing’ in driving the story along, or in developing some of the tale’s themes?
One among many, but it helps with the whole Moon-Sun thing.
Can you compare the two cities in terms of their:
D. Setting (physical location, strategic purpose)?
Minas Ithil commands the overland trade route to the East of the Anduin, Minas Tirith commands the overland trade route West of the Anduin. Osgiliath of course commands the water trade route of the Anduin.
Basically Gondor had the North-South trade routes all sewn up. No wonder the Haradrim hated them.
E. Economics (fundamental means of supporting a large, concentrated, urban population)?
Like Isengard Minas Morgul was supported by farms worked by slaves.
Minas Tirith was supported by farms worked by indentured individuals of an alternate socio-economic strata.
F. Architecture (structures, layout, military value, construction materials, style)?
Both were put on a high seat, with one’s courtyards filled with lovely sunlight, the other with beautiful moonlight (later a corpse light mockery of moonlight). I suppose both were built with stone from nearby quarries, which meant Minas Tirith was built from stone from The White Mountains and Minas Ithil was built with stone from The Fence of Shadow which when you think about it explains a lot.
G. Symbolism (underlying meanings or messages, both story-internal and story-external)?
The Sun is constant, the Moon is cyclic. We may expect Good to be eternal, but Evil returns again and again after each defeat.
One thing I’ve always noticed about this passage, is that there seems to be a different kind of horror associated with Morgul, relative to its parent land, Mordor. In Morgul we are confronted with the idea of ‘living death’; in Mordor we experience what I think of as ‘spiritual death’, or total oblivion. Here are some of the images I note whenever I read this part of the chapter: decay, living death, corpse-light (whatever that is), phosphorescence, inner darkness, mouth, eyes, luminous, demented, sickening charnel-smell, rottenness. This is not the vocabulary we will encounter in the Morder chapters of Book VI.
H. Please comment if you agree, or disagree.
The rot of the body versus the rot of the soul.
******************************************
I met a Balrog on the stair.
He had some wings that weren't there.
They weren't there again today.
I wish he would just fly away.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Feb 26 2016, 9:17pm
Post #20 of 20
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Mr. Sauron, tear down this wall! //
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Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room!
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How to find old Reading Room discussions.
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