5. The Ride of the Rohirrim; 6. The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
In this chapter, we turn back to Théoden’s army as it rides toward Gondor. The king receives unexpected help from “the wild folk of the woods,” a shy people reminiscent of a kind of forest dwarves. These guide Théoden’s army along secret forest paths to avoid orcs that has laid an ambush precisely to prevent reinforcements from Rohan from reaching Gondor.
When they emerge from the forest on the other side, one of the forest people’s scouts announces somewhat cryptically that “the wind has turned”—it is now coming from the south. The wind is repeated. When the host of riders reaches a height overlooking the Pelennor Fields, King Théoden grows despondent—the enemy is so numerous. It is almost as if he shrinks in the saddle. But then he feels the wind from the south, and far, far away in that direction he sees a light glimmering in the now perpetually dark landscape. He vaguely glimpses clouds like distant grey shapes, and beyond them the dawn.
The repetition of the wind from the south is a portent of the king’s return, which is underscored by the clouds that create an illusion of “grey shapes” (with associations to Aragorn’s grey-clad company) and the hint of dawn. After his initiation, Aragorn's descent into the underworld from which he brought up and redeemed restless spirits, he himself has become spiritualised. The wind, the grey and somewhat ghostly shapes, and the light are signs of the arrival of a high, spiritual value that comes via the water’s flow to the centre of events. This spiritualisation reinforces Aragorn’s shamanistic qualities, to which we will return in “The Houses of Healing.”
The Rohirrim blow their horns and ride to the attack. Théoden’s golden shield shines like the sun. Mordor’s hosts are seized with panic, “for the dawn came, the dawn and a wind from the sea.”
6. The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
Despite the Rohirrim’s devastating charge, the battle is far from won. It will surge back and forth; but attacks, retreats, reinforcements, and counter-attacks are of little interest to our context. What is central to us on the Pelennor Fields before Aragorn’s arrival is the encounter between Éowyn and the Witch-king of Angmar. He is the lord of the Nazgûl who represents Sauron and leads the war against Gondor. Sauron himself is a passive force in the background, in keeping with earlier and forthcoming discussions of his symbolic value.
The Witch-king of Angmar
The Witch-king has undergone a minor transformation since we last saw him—it cannot have been many minutes ago. Then he sat on his black horse with a pale, flaming blade and taunted Gandalf inside the city wall. He then left the scene and now returns above the Pelennor Fields, flying on a primordial winged beast with a mace instead of a sword. Why does he not come riding on his black steed with his magical sword when he meets Éowyn—why did he go off to change weapons and mount? We shall see.
We have previously established that Gandalf and the Witch-king are each other’s opposites since Gandalf returned from the dead. Gandalf commands the defence of Gondor, and the Witch-king, as stated, commands Mordor’s invasion. The dramatic contest of strength between them, the white rider and the black, led, as we saw, to a stalemate that was broken by the cock’s crow. We surmise that the tale had nowhere to go once the narrative had brought these opposites together. The situation became something of a dead end, which one may assume intuition resolved with “the unexpected third,” the cock that crows. The scene “did not work,” so to speak, so the Witch-king turned back to return in another scene, with a different mount, a different weapon, and a different opponent.
Théoden and his riders were successful. But when the charge ebbs and the riders halt to regroup, the chieftain of the Haradrim sees the king’s standard from afar and unfurls his own: a black serpent on a scarlet field. Then they storm toward each other. Théoden, as the representative of the sun, “slays the serpent,” as he himself puts it later. That the hero, representing the sun, slays the dragon is of course a well-known archetypal image.
With regard to this event, we can return to the cock’s crow, for it leads, so to speak, to Rohan’s horn-blowing; which in turn leads to the arrival of the sun-hero—Théoden thundering forth with his shining, golden shield. One can thus toy with the idea that Théoden came because the cock crowed, in accordance with the symbolic thinking that once gave the inspiration that the sun rises thanks to the cock’s crow, or that spring breaks forth because the small birds sing.
But then the Witch-king comes flying on his winged beast, and both men and horses are seized with panic. Not Théoden, of course, but his horse Snowmane rears, is shot, and falls with the king beneath it. The Witch-king’s monster lands on the horse and drives its claws into its body. The sunlight that Théoden represents on the Pelennor Fields is his chief enemy on the battlefield.
The Winged Beast
It is not entirely clear what kind of monster the Witch-king rides. Tolkien never describes it in its entirety. But the scant descriptions that do appear bring to mind above all a pterodactyl and/or a featherless bird of prey. We know that it arrives “like a bird,” has huge bat-like wings, is larger than all other “birds,” but is “naked,” has a “long naked neck,” and a “beak”—and it stinks. Notably, the winged monsters are described as “carrion-birds” when Frodo, Sam, and Gollum see them at the Black Gate.
At the same time as the beast has traits of a pterodactyl, we see that it is primarily likened to a featherless bird. In letter 211, Tolkien writes that he did not intend the Witch-king’s monster to be a “pterosaur,” but adds that it is obviously pterosaur-like.[1] When these flying beasts are depicted, they are usually presented as some kind of dragon-monster. That is, of course, more visually appealing than a “naked bird” with bat wings.
Nevertheless, according to the text, the monster clearly has traits of some kind of vulture. This repulsive bird is a carrion-eater with a sharp beak, long naked neck, and a stench about it—all in keeping with the Nazgûl’s beast. Note also that the first thing the “carrion-eater” does when it lands is to sink its claws into the dead horse. Naturally, the monster is not a giant vulture, but it seems clear that the author’s associations went in that direction—he practically says so explicitly. Furthermore, for our consideration, it is interesting that this monster from primeval times lingered in cold, forgotten mountains under the moon. We have several times seen how the interiors of mountains are the domain of the Terrible Mother in this universe, which is reinforced by the generally feminine moon-image.
The vulture motif is consistent with the tale’s imagery. The vulture as a symbol is associated with the Terrible Mother or simply with the Great Mother in general,[2] and we recognise the rot and stench from Minas Morgul. Regardless of how we wish to classify or prefer to visualise the beast the Witch-king rides, it bears the vulture’s attributes, those of the Terrible Mother.
Death and Spiritualisation
We may in passing note the fact that the Black Riders now possess flying monsters. The Ringwraiths and their horses “died” in the flood-wave that Elrond let sweep over them at the Ford, and then return flying. The Ringwraiths, too, have thus undergone a kind of spiritualisation. It is worth noting that these flying forms appeared after Gandalf’s fall. When the wizard had climbed the mountain and given up the ghost, the great eagle Gwaihir came and bore him to Galadriel. In a corresponding way, Aragorn underwent his death and rebirth, after which he is repeatedly associated with the wind. Thus Gandalf, Aragorn, and the Ringwraiths all undergo this transformation before the story’s climax. Since Aragorn and Gandalf, one after the other, have the Ringwraiths as their opposites, each development is mirrored.
One might perhaps have expected Frodo also to undergo in some way a similar transformation to Aragorn and Gandalf. In a sense he does. When the Ring is destroyed he, unconscious, is borne up into the sky by the great eagles. The heroes Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn form a triad whose repressed fourth—always dark and uncanny—is represented by the Ringwraiths, the Terrible Mother’s emissaries. The quartet expressed as 3+1, where the three (e.g., the Trinity) are “good” and the fourth (e.g., the devil) is “evil,” is an archetypal image that Jung often discusses.[3]
Éowyn and the Witch-king
Thus King Théoden lies “broken” beneath Snowmane, into which the stinking carrion-eater sinks its claws, with the Witch-king of Angmar on its back. The lord of the Nazgûl has, as mentioned, a large black mace as his weapon. The horse and sword he had in the encounter with Gandalf, as if to mirror him in Minas Tirith, suggest a higher degree of consciousness or civilisation; but now on the violence-dominated battlefield where creatures are massacred, he expresses a more raw and unconscious destruction. This is also the only time a Ringwraith, if we stick strictly to the text, engages in close combat with anyone. While the sword is a distinguishing and masculine instrument that requires knowledge and, let us say, civilisation, the mace is in every sense blunter. The mace suggests a crushing; not merely victory over the opponent but its annihilation.[4] Gandalf cannot be annihilated, unlike the riders of Rohan and their leader.
All are seized, as mentioned, with panic and flee from the Witch-king and his dreadful beast—except one. The young Dernhelm, as Éowyn calls herself when she has joined Théoden’s host incognito, has also been thrown off, but rises and turns toward the enemy. Meanwhile, Merry crawls about on all fours, “like a dazed beast.”
“Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!” cries Dernhelm. (Note the link to carrion, apropos the vulture symbol.) “Leave the dead in peace!”
“Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.”
We see once more that the threat from the Ringwraith is darkness, devouring, and dissolution. (“Nakedness” in this context alludes not only to vulnerability but also to losing one’s individuality.) We have previously pointed out that the Ringwraiths do not kill anyone but frighten, paralyse, bind, and so forth. Here their lord explicitly states that he has no intention of killing Éowyn but intends to deliver her to the Terrible Mother, entirely in line with earlier discussions. Dernhelm draws the sword and says, “I shall hinder you if I can.”
“Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!”
“But no living man am I!” Éowyn cries triumphantly and casts her helmet aside. “You look upon a woman.”
The Ringwraith does not answer but falls silent. He has fallen into doubt, the text explains.
We must, of course, pause and contemplate what has just happened here, since it is such an unexpected and strange scene. If one did not know better, one would surely have understood the prophecy that “no [living] man” meant that no living human being can kill the Witch-king. That would be reasonable within the tale’s internal logic, since the Witch-king is such a powerful, bodiless, and sorcerous wraith that a simple mortal human could never defeat him. But that is not the case; the fact is that no man can kill him, as opposed to a woman.
Rationally, one can understand it thus: Glorfindel’s prophecy (which we need to go outside the tale to acquaint ourselves with) was a consequence of clairvoyance—he knew that the Witch-king would be killed by a woman, not by a man. The Witch-king himself is then familiar with the prophecy and obviously relies on it. So when he now stands before an armed woman, he hesitates—not because he faces a mighty opponent (he did not hesitate before Gandalf, for example) but because it is precisely a woman. That is revealing, but the question is what is revealed. We must emphasise that the woman in question is a mortal shield-maiden from Rohan with an ordinary steel sword, who has made no name for herself in regard to battle or sorcery. Yet the Witch-king falls into highly uncharacteristic perplexity when she reveals herself.
But at the same time, Éowyn is not “just a woman.” She represents something beyond the question of sex. Éowyn is not seized, unlike the other riders from Rohan, with panic. While she stands steadfast before the Witch-king, the poor hobbit, for example, “crawls” about in terror. As we have seen many times in the tale, fear is the Ringwraiths’ chief weapon, and that evidently does not work on this shield-maiden of Rohan. Tolkien writes in letter 210: “[The Ringwraiths’] peril is almost entirely due to the unreasoning fear which they inspire (like ghosts). They have no great physical power against the fearless...”
As emissaries of the Terrible Mother, like Hecate’s nightmares and wraiths, the Witch-king fares rather poorly if no one is seized with fear of him. That is, it is the individual human psyche, not the body, that they attack. A corresponding effect is found with the Eye: the exposure and nakedness it implies are so terrible that Saruman and Denethor, among others, go mad from encountering it. This passive, psychic effect that the threat constitutes is also a reason why Sauron is not seen, does not participate actively in the tale, but—again like Hecate—sends out his wraiths to act (but still rarely physically) toward the victim. It is as if Sauron himself does not quite exist, except as an idea or inner experience—that is, he constitutes a psychological circumstance rather than an actual, physical opponent.
In this context, it deserves a reminder of how the Ring actually functions in the tale—not how it is described, but its actual effects according to the narrative. We have seen how some are seized with desire for the Ring because they believe it can satisfy their wants. But in reality, it does not satisfy them, aside from wholly trivial wishes such as avoiding being seen. Moreover, we know that most people in the tale do not particularly desire the Ring, and we have been able to conclude that this is because they do not feel desire for personal gratification (which includes escape from something unpleasant); instead, they strive for higher goals. The Ring’s power, like the Witch-king’s, presupposes a certain psychological disposition—whether the person desires something, on the one hand, or whether he or she fears ghosts, on the other. Aragorn desires nothing for himself, for instance; Éowyn, for her part, is not seized with panic when the Witch-king approaches but stands firm with sword in hand.
Thus, an armed woman now stands before the Witch-king and threatens him. We must conclude that the Witch-king hesitates because he knows that a woman can actually defeat him, but moreover she does not seem to fear him. What remains, then, for this wraith whose chief weapon is terror?
This is where the mace enters the picture. For the Witch-king, what remains is brutal, blunt violence based on physical strength. It is the first and only time a Ringwraith uses physical violence in this way. One might say that, from a symbolic perspective, this is the reason he does not come to Éowyn with a magical sword but with a primitive, crushing weapon.[6] As if in desperation, he smashes her shield with all his physical might, in a manner uncharacteristic of wraiths. From this alone, one can sense that the Witch-king has lost his grip in the encounter with Éowyn.
Feminine versus Masculine
Yet we must still return to the fact that Éowyn’s sex is of decisive importance. We set aside Glorfindel’s prophecy (it lies outside the tale and may moreover be an after-the-fact construction) and consider the scene symbolically. That is close at hand, since for a first-time reader it is incomprehensible from a rational perspective that Éowyn—unlike, say, Aragorn—can destroy the Witch-king. Most first-time readers probably start in surprise at this revelation. You almost think something must be “lost in translation.” The circumstance is, within the framework of the tale, highly irrational, and for that reason one may assume an intuitive inspiration in the author that is best understood from a symbolic perspective.
We have seen that the tale mainly revolves around the Great Mother. We need only remind ourselves of settings such as the Shire, the Old Forest, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlórien, and the Dead Marshes, as well as important figures such as the “Hecatean” wraiths, the devouring willow-woman, the tentacles in the lake, the strangling serpent, Galadriel, Gollum, and Shelob. Out of necessity, but presumably not without weariness for the reader, we have repeated ourselves almost endlessly on this point, simply because the archetypal image in its various aspects returns (almost) everywhere, more or less explicitly.
For most of this journey, however, the mature, concretised femininity has been absent, because masculinity lies like a damp blanket over Middle-earth and has suppressed it. One of the tale’s goals, it seems to us, is to restore the balance between the masculine (yang) and the feminine (yin). That requires that ordinary, concrete women, just like ordinary, concrete men, roam freely. That a “real woman” steps forward therefore represents a significant development of the tale’s universe. The only one who represents this value in, say, everyday life (and we have spoken of the importance of integrating the content into concrete reality) is Éowyn. She becomes, in terms of balance, a considerable “power factor”; she is something decisive—neither the mythical representative of the Good Mother nor of the Terrible Mother, but a real, independent woman. As such, she represents conscious distance from both Galadriel’s and the Witch-king’s world; she is not swallowed by either.
The influential analyst and author Edward Edinger emphasises the necessity of not identifying with the conflict or either side of it, but the importance of rising above it and viewing it objectively. That, he argues, drastically changes the entire situation and enables a solution. If one identifies with the conflict or one of its opposites, one is in its hands.[7] One becomes, so to speak, swallowed by it. Éowyn in our tale seems to possess that ability, unlike, for example, the crawling Merry.
We have established that the Ringwraiths are emissaries of the Terrible Mother and that their goal is to extinguish masculine consciousness and its individuality. We recall that the Witch-king, when he had the bearer of this within reach, did not grope for the Ring, or for that matter decisively chop off Frodo’s finger for simplicity’s sake; no, he showed no interest in the Ring at all, but instead stabbed Frodo with the Morgul-blade so that Frodo would become a wraith in their—or the Terrible Mother’s—underworld; the Bearer was to be given to the darkness and bound. For the same reason, the Ringwraiths hissed at the Ford that Frodo should come “back to Mordor.” He has never been in Mordor, but he has been in the darkness of the unconscious—and that is where he is to return. Once the Terrible Mother’s emissaries have accomplished this, the Ring is meaningless.
The Ringwraiths’ character and goal change during the journey, just as, for example, Frodo’s do. Gandalf, as the representative of light and inspiration, becomes, like Aragorn, who represents renewal and order, the chief opponent. But it is clear that the Ringwraiths are sent to drag the heroic—that is, individualistic—masculinity back down into the underworld, so that the shadow can fall over the world.
That is why the Witch-king, in the service of the Terrible Mother, becomes perplexed when he finds himself standing before a fearless, real woman with a sword, a representative of concretised but free and conscious femininity. Against this, his witchcraft is of no avail; Éowyn is, so to speak, not afraid of ghosts. She is like the mother who drives away the child’s nightmares.
That the Witch-king falls silent and hesitates is a critical detail, for it suggests that he does not know how to handle the situation that has arisen—which must be an unusual experience for the lord of the Nazgûl. This was not meant to happen. Éowyn in battle-array on the Pelennor Fields is an unforeseen deviation. She, after all, also broke the king’s command (the prevailing order of Middle-earth) to end up here. She committed a crime; she deviated and shaped her own individual fate. There is no preparation for this encounter. If the Witch-king cannot use his nightmares on Éowyn—what is he to do?
For the first time, a Ringwraith manifests brutal, masculine violence. For lack of other means, he tries to crush her with the mace. One might toy with the idea that this weakens him, for he abandons what makes him powerful in relation to men, namely the Terrible Mother’s witchcraft. He shifts to behaving like a thug; an extremely masculine warrior like Heracles with the club, instead of appearing as Hecate’s wraith. Now he is apparently no longer going to lead her to the Terrible Mother’s underworld, with his recurring sense of superiority, but simply beat her to death. This must be seen as a sign of suddenly arisen weakness in the “Witch-king,” in the encounter with Éowyn, the Woman.
Thus, while the Ringwraith abandons his dark feminine abilities, against which the woman before him seems immune, in order instead to resort to his dark masculinity to crush her, the corresponding applies to Éowyn. While she represents genuine femininity, she uses her masculine abilities against the Witch-king. Not only does she represent the sun with her long blonde hair that gleams like gold—that is, she has “inherited” the fallen Théoden’s symbolic value (her hair was not uncovered before he fell)—but she also wields a sword, an eminently masculine instrument, which she soon drives straight into the enemy’s head.
That the Witch-king figuratively leaves the ghost-world for the physical world is an opening, for he becomes not only physically dangerous but also physically vulnerable. Merry unwittingly exploits this, having in his crawling come to his senses behind him. He thrusts the blade from the Barrow-downs into the Witch-king’s hollow of the knee, thereby cutting the sinew behind the kneecap.
It is an unusually specific injury, but as later becomes clear, the author uses sinew to describe what binds together and holds together (in keeping with metaphors such as “sinews of war,” “sinews of the bridge,” etc.). Merry’s blade breaks the enchantment that binds the wraith to matter with his dagger-thrust, we are told. Then Éowyn drives the sword into the “head” of the now doubly weakened Witch-king, whose spirit, while clothes and armour fall to the ground, shoots up with a shriek and is borne away by the wind.
Thus Éowyn and Merry have defeated the enemy’s leader. The good forces won this battle. They were good, for while the enemy wished to slay them for his own sake, Éowyn and Merry used their weapons for the sake of others. Éowyn, with tears falling down her cheeks, wished to defend Théoden, and Merry, with tears falling down his cheeks, wished to defend Éowyn.
The Conclusion of the Battle
When Éowyn drives the blade into the Witch-king, the sword shatters and she herself falls unconscious to the ground. In corresponding fashion, Merry’s blade vanishes after his thrust. We recognise the image from Weathertop, where the blade that stabbed Frodo went up in smoke. This is one of several castration motifs that occur in the tale. As mentioned, it is expected that castration is a recurring image in a tale that revolves around the Great Mother.
The images mentioned describe how a blade used against or by the Terrible Mother loses its power once it has, so to speak, done its work; it becomes a kind of sacrifice. But the castration motif in the tale also has other meanings. The Terrible Mother can use her power to break an individual’s manhood, as when the Witch-king shatters Frodo’s sword at the Ford. Moreover, a man can sacrifice his blade for the sake of the Great Mother, as did Aragorn the wanderer. Finally, the sacrifice can concern the relinquishing of a lower masculinity for a higher, as was the case with Boromir’s sword and horn and, to some extent, Frodo’s finger on Mount Doom.
Théoden lies dying. Snowmane, who apparently was not quite dead, has loyally rolled aside before finally dying, so that the king may have a worthier end. But Théoden is content, for after his resolute charge against the hosts of darkness and then the slaying of the chieftain of the Haradrim in single combat, he can go to his fathers without shame. We see that King Théoden, who decided that the woman and the hobbit should stay at home, values everything masculine most highly. As we have discussed, he appreciates femininity but does not integrate it. Perhaps that is why his instincts—his horse—became his death?
The battle is not over. While Théoden and Éowyn are carried away (the latter also presumed dead), new enemies come over the river, and the orcs that stormed Minas Tirith turn back out onto the battlefield. The folk of Harad with their mastodontic mûmakil approach from the south. Éomer regroups his riders in the north.
It looks dark once more on the Pelennor Fields. It grows worse when the sails of enemy ships loom up in the south on the waters of the Anduin. Despair spreads among the men of Gondor and Rohan. But behold! A banner glittering with jewels and mithril thread is unfurled and flutters in the wind—the White Tree with seven stars and a crown. Borne on the wind, as it is said, Aragorn returns from the dead.
He too has sacrificed his sword, to return to the discussion above, for we recall that the skeleton in the underworld that represented his old self had a broken blade, just as “the old” Aragorn had. Like Boromir, he has sacrificed the “lower” masculinity for the “higher,” and that is why he comes spiritualised to Gondor and calls himself Elessar.
With him he has an army of men he has gathered along the coastal cities, and under Aragorn’s leadership and banner the enemy is finally defeated on the Pelennor Fields.
Footnotes
[1] Tolkien, Letters, p. 282.
[2] Jung, Symbols of Transformation, par. 354; "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9i, par. 95.
[3] See, for instance Jung, "A Psychological Approach to the Trinity," CW 11, par. 243ff.
[4] Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols.
[5] Tolkien, Letters, p. 272.
[6] If this were a dream, the Witch-king would probably prove to have a mace precisely in this scene. But as a literary work, the narrative demands that the Witch-king enter the scene with the weapon. From a symbolic perspective, one might say that the Witch-king turns out to have a mace because of the encounter with Éowyn, not as a result of his having traded his magical and mighty sword for a simple club while the battle raged.
[7] Edinger, Mysterium Lectures, p. 25.