New Year

[rabidsamfan]

In Gondor they celebrate the New Year in the spring, to commemorate the day that Frodo reached the Crack of Doom, and Gollum took the Ring into the fire. Aragorn thinks that we should do the same, but Sam says there's more about the day that he wants to forget than he wants to remember, and I just nod. Merry wishes we'd celebrate, I know, but it's different for him. He wasn't there like me and Sam were -- not that day anyway. I asked him if he wanted to celebrate the victory of Pelennor Fields and that shut him up.

Comments

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and in spite of all the good that came of it, when you think of it, that day was a slice of hell for both Sam and Pippin. Pippin's main memory is despair and nearly dying under that troll. And Sam... well, in his nightmares he sees Frodo put on the Ring and is helpless to do anything about it -- nightmares that are all the worse because in dreams he has a chance to attempt doing something, and being Sam, it would never occur to him that he'd already saved Frodo when he let Gollum go before he ever walked into the mountain.

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

nightmares that are all the worse because in dreams he has a chance to attempt doing something, and being Sam, it would never occur to him that he'd already saved Frodo when he let Gollum go before he ever walked into the mountain.

*tears up* Oh dear, you're so right, he would never think of that...true as it is, he would just never think of it.

And the drabble itself--splendid. You write Pippin well! What a perfectly in character last line.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Hence the ankle-biting plotbunny...

Re: Pippin's main memory

[eykar.livejournal.com]

But what Pippin remembered was dying HAPPY: "So it ends as I guessed it would," his thought said, even as it fluttered away; and it laughed a little within him ere it fled, almost gay it seemed to be casting off at last all doubt and care and fear.« I think that this, like his attempts to describe Treebeard, was one of the parts of the quest that he especially wanted Frodo to write in the Red Book. It probably made dying the second time easier for him, too.

Re: Pippin's main memory

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I don't read that as "happy" at all. I read it as the place beyond despair...

Re: Pippin's main memory

[eykar.livejournal.com]

I think he was experiencing the wave of change that swept through the world due to the Ring's being destroyed. If not for that, he might indeed have been only beyond despair.

Re: Pippin's main memory

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

I doubt it actually. The Eagles arrive just before the Nazgul are recalled -- i.e., just when Frodo claims the Ring -- and Pippin is already going into unconsciousness. It's at least a couple of minutes before Gollum gets the Ring and falls, for if nothing else Gandalf has a chance to tell the armies to stand for the hour of doom. (And Pippin never hears that being said.)

No, I think the "almost" is in that sentence for a very good reason, and Pippin has no memory of the rush of relief that Faramir and Eowyn (and presumably Merry) feel when the Ring is destroyed and Sauron too.