Meditations on Middle-Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien by Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raymond E. Feist, Terry Pratchett, Charles De Lint, George R. R. Martin, and More by John Howe & Karen Haber

Author:John Howe & Karen Haber [Howe, John & Haber, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2002-10-10T22:00:00+00:00

UGLUK, CHIEF OF THE ISENGARDERS

The Two Towers

Chapter III: “The Uruk-Hai”

I shied away then (and for a long time after) from considering who or what was doing the requiring at that point, or how my taking a stand could possibly make the slightest difference to the status of the world. That was a question I still haven’t answered to my satisfaction. But on that Sunday, I didn’t give the question more than few minutes’ thought. I was completely overwhelmed at the thought of having to wait a whole day to find out what happened next. It was intolerable. My family watched me moping around the house, and wondered out loud, several times, what was the matter with me. Trying to explain was a mistake. My father just shrugged and said, “It’s just a book; don’t get so excited.” And then rubbed in some salt by saying, “You should have taken your time and made sure there wasn’t a third one before you left.” Gee, thanks, Dad. See if I stand up for you the next time a giant spider stings you in the neck.

The rest of that day and that night (during which I got to sleep only late and with difficulty) dragged in a bad imitation of Einstein’s joke-definition of relativity. But, finally, Monday morning manifested itself. I had to go to school first, which was even more of a nuisance than usual: the eight hours between going in there and getting out again looked wider than any desert and more challenging than any mountain. Caradhras the Cruel was on my mind—all that horrible ordeal the Company of the Ring had gone through, and for what?—and poor Sam lying there on his face, and Frodo, gone, alive, but maybe not to be so for long—who knew? I was shaking with nerves on this subject all day, for what had struck me as I read the first two volumes was a sort of merciless quality about Tolkien’s writing—not so much a transparency of plot as an absolute subjection of it to the requirements, not of the author, but of the world he was writing about, or in. Middle-earth seemed to have its own agenda, to which maybe even Tolkien was, in a very special sense, in service, and it had occurred to me that happy endings might not be what that world was going to require of him, or me. I was terrified to get my hands on the third volume, and I couldn’t wait.

Finally, time doing what it normally does in this universe, 3:30 rolled around, and I escaped from that place of torment at high speed, and ran to our little town’s main street, and caught the bus to the next town, where the bookstore was. I threw myself in through its door and went straight to the rack where I had found the first two books, and found the third one, and seized it as if it was the heart out of my body, and just barely remembered to pay for it, for I was already reading it as I got to the door where the cash register was.

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