The Return of the King: After the Victory

A review of The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

By H.R. Zimmerer

Spoiler warning: This review discusses The Lord of the Rings with spoilers, including references to other volumes.

The older I am when I return to Tolkien, the less willing I am to hurry past the chapters after the Ring is destroyed. The battles matter. The journey home is where the consequences become impossible to set aside.

The Return of the King gives us the large satisfactions its title promises: a besieged city defended, an ancient kingship restored, the destruction of Sauron’s principal means of domination. It also insists on asking what happens to the people who have made those things possible.

THE BOOK

The Return of the King

Author
J. R. R. Tolkien

First UK publication
October 20, 1955

Series
The Lord of the Rings · Volume 3

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At Minas Tirith, Pippin enters a household already shaped by loss. Denethor’s grief for Boromir and his unequal judgement of his sons make the public responsibilities of the Steward painfully domestic. Faramir is expected to serve a father whose approval remains attached to another man.

Denethor’s despair has political consequences because his suffering is joined to authority. His use of the palantír has given him information arranged towards a conclusion of defeat. Possessing knowledge does not protect him from a judgement that makes every remaining duty seem pointless.

Against that collapse, Tolkien places people who act without being able to guarantee the outcome. The arrival of the Rohirrim is magnificent partly because the ride has not been undertaken on the understanding that everything will turn out well.

Éowyn’s confrontation with the Witch-king belongs to that courage, and Merry’s participation matters to its result. Neither is where the expectations of the powerful would have placed them. Their actions expose how much a formal account of who may be useful has failed to recognise.

Éowyn’s later movement towards healing is more complicated than a reward for martial success. She has been drawn towards death as an escape from a life she experiences as confinement. Her relationship with Faramir offers the possibility of wanting a future.

I find that possibility moving, though her decision to turn from the warrior’s role can also leave an uneasy question about how much room the story grants her ambitions once the immediate crisis has passed. The emotional resolution need not make that question disappear.

Aragorn’s kingship is made credible through more than the recovery of a name and a sword. His willingness to heal, and his awareness of what he can ask others to risk, give the restoration a practical moral content. At the Black Gate, the military undertaking serves a purpose the army cannot directly accomplish: making a little more room for Frodo and Sam.

The journey within Mordor is deliberately reduced in scale. There is little room left for a view of history. There is a step, another stretch of ground, the need for water and the difficulty of helping someone whose burden cannot simply be understood from outside.

Sam’s endurance is extraordinary, but Tolkien keeps it attached to practical acts. Food has to be saved. Frodo has to be found, moved and supported. Affection becomes the work of noticing what another person can no longer do.

Then, at the decisive place, Frodo cannot surrender the Ring.

That failure is essential to the book’s understanding of what he has endured. A conclusion in which sufficient goodness simply overcomes the final temptation would make the prolonged damage of carrying the Ring much easier to dismiss. Frodo has reached the limit of what he can give.

Gollum’s intervention brings earlier acts of pity into the outcome. He has remained dangerous, and his last act is not a serene moral conversion. Nevertheless, the fact that he has been spared matters. The history leading to the Ring’s destruction contains mercy as well as determination.

The result allows for providence without making the travellers’ decisions unnecessary. They have had to go as far as they can, without possessing a complete account of what their actions will make possible.

The homecoming then refuses the simple comfort of an untouched Shire. The place the hobbits have carried in memory has suffered under men who discover that rules, shortages and intimidation can make a small country obedient. Saruman’s reduced circumstances have not made him incapable of malice.

The Scouring matters because Merry, Pippin and Sam must use what the journey has taught them in the country they actually belong to. Frodo’s reluctance to answer cruelty with more killing gives his changed position a different expression. He has seen enough of the appetite to punish.

But protecting the Shire does not restore his ability to live there without pain. His wounds recur. Other people’s flourishing cannot be made to prove that he ought to be well.

This is the part of the ending I most value. Sam can marry Rosie, build a household and take joy in the country he helped preserve. Frodo can love him and still need to leave. Neither life cancels the truth of the other.

The departure from the Grey Havens gives grief a direction without pretending it is the same thing as recovery. Frodo is not being punished for failing to enjoy the victory properly. The world he has helped save contains a happiness he can no longer fully inhabit.

Some readers find the long sequence of endings excessive, and the restored political order invites questions the narrative is not especially interested in pursuing. Its hierarchies remain recognisable; a good king is still a king. These limits coexist with the force of its account of loss.

When Sam returns to his own door, the story finally allows the ordinary life defended through three volumes to continue. I finish it grateful for that continuation, and unable to regard its peace as something that arrived cheaply.