[Formendacil]

In contrast to the majority of the posts on this thread, which got swept up into speculation about the palantiri, I'm going to consider more how Tolkien places this chapter, so that after a period of resolution, we get the introduction of new excitements. I don't think there is a point anywhere in Book III where I am less interested in leaving the thread of this side of the story and going back to Frodo! Who cares about Frodo? I want more Gandalf, more Aragorn and his testy rights to mysterious stones, more about the stones themselves, more Pippin, more Merry!

And yet, we get a cliffhanger. The Nazgul are streaming over Rohan toward Isengard, Gandalf is madly dashing to Minas Tirith, no one knows what Sauron knows. It's a fantastic chapter pointing the plot forward.

I didn't mention it last chapter, but I should have: Wormtongue throwing the Orthanc-stone out the window is one of my least favourite moments in the books. If anything feels just a little too coincidental, that's the moment. I bring that up here because, by contrast, the action in this chapter fits together perfectly. It may be a narrow escape for Pippin--even divine providence, as a younger me once remarked--but it is also completely in accord with his character, and everything that follows clatters after it like dominoes.

Not given much emphasis in the thread above, though it really struck me during this reread, is the fact that Pippin's encounter here is the only direct experience of Sauron that we get as readers in the whole book--and Pippin is the only hobbit that actually faces the great enemy. It's simultaneously a crime and a great relief that the change in the movies of Sauron to a great eyeball means that this scene is rendered unfilmable in a book-true fashion, because I find it to be a passage that grows in horror for me each time I read it, and whether that's just imagination or the cumulative effect of knowing more and more who Sauron is (say, pondering the Akallabeth or the Lay of Leithian) really doesn't matter so much as the fact that I truly enjoy reaching this scene.