{"id":2803,"date":"2021-12-19T19:48:05","date_gmt":"2021-12-19T11:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inkwell.asia\/?p=2803"},"modified":"2021-12-19T19:51:15","modified_gmt":"2021-12-19T11:51:15","slug":"how-we-are-rohan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inkwell.asia\/zh\/how-we-are-rohan\/","title":{"rendered":"How We are Rohan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 20 years ago, I sat in a theater in Minnesota, a wide-eyed prepubescent, taking in The Lord of the Rings <\/em>trilogy for the first time. In the years that followed, I would go on to watch the films until I could quote them in my sleep, reread the trilogy, and dress up as a Ringwraith well into my 30s. And yet, when I talked about them, I always ranked The Two Towers <\/em>third, citing its \u201cslower pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Truth be told, I could never really justify why I felt this way about the second installment when I first saw it. But now, on the 20th<\/sup> anniversary of when the trilogy debuted and rocked the cinematic landscape, in a vastly changed world, I understand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Lord of the Rings <\/em>is among the most important cultural phenomena out there, and the story is more relevant than ever\u2014<\/em>particularly The Two Towers.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It hit me as I sat in a Shanghai theater watching the trilogy rescreened for the anniversary earlier this year. Only in 2021, adrift in a pandemic, locked away from family, can the opening of The Two Towers <\/em>resonate with its full emotional beats. It doesn\u2019t start like most epics with a grandiose arrival, rather beginning quietly, with the echoing memory of Gandalf\u2019s seemingly final moments in the Mines of Moria. It then moves on to Frodo, miles away in a foreign land, masking his grief as he awakens to the bleak reality that he still must soldier on, with no promise of a happy ending. The film then lingers in Rohan, where one cannot trust to hope, for \u201cit has forsaken these lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is not just a story about destroying an evil ring: It\u2019s a story about that perilous transition from despair to hope, and the near-impossibility to bridge it. It is a story for exactly this moment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I blamed the pacing for my disconnect, but I was wrong. I simply hadn\u2019t known grief\u2014not in the way I would in 2021.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Naming the numbness<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

According to an April article<\/a> by The New York Times, <\/em>the dominating emotion of 2021 can be summed up as \u201clanguishing,\u201d or \u201ca sense of stagnation and emptiness \u2026 as if you\u2019re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield.\u201d The author Adam Grant calls languishing \u201cthe emotional long-haul of the pandemic\u201d as the initial fight or flight response from the early days wears off and seemingly nothing has changed. In a sense, it is what happens when you are asked to rally again and again, only to have hope dashed against the rocks each time, or when \u201cyou\u2019re indifferent to your indifference.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If this feels familiar, that\u2019s because it probably is. Even in a place like Shanghai, where life was more or less able to go on as usual after the initial outbreak in 2020, I and others I know have felt this ever-present, low-burning despair at so much not having changed and so much that will never be the same. Sometimes this sense of numbness hits me when I try to make plans even half a year from now. Sometimes it hits me when I remember all of the close friends that had to leave China and, with shut borders, won\u2019t return. Sometimes it hits me when I watch friends and family in my home country reunite and have to stop short of telling them when I can join them, for fear of sparking hope that will only get snuffed until international travel resumes. Languishing is the color of never-ending, noncommittal gray, and it feels like static constantly buzzing at the back of your head, no matter the promises of something better.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As The New York Times <\/em>piece contends, naming the sensation can help. But part of the pain is in feeling that the despair is a lesser grief. After all, how can we mourn a strict border when Shanghai has been so safe? How can we be sad for small losses, given the scale of the loss worldwide? How can we languish, when we have had so many opportunities to flourish?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is precisely the premise of The Two Towers. <\/em>Whereas the first installment shows characters imbued with fight-or-flight energy to solve an existential threat before it\u2019s too late, The Two Towers <\/em>is a story of what happens when those efforts feel futile and how too much grief left unacknowledged is paralyzing. The kingdom of Rohan embodies what it means to languish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a telling scene before the pivotal Battle of Helm\u2019s Deep, King Th\u00e9oden stands bathed in a thin stream of faint light, face frozen in a mask of defeat as he intones: \u201cWhere is the horse and his rider?\u201d He is numb, even as he dons the armor of a king more confident. None of the conviction meets his eyes. \u201cSo much death\u2026 What can Men do against such reckless hate?\u201d he later says, as defeat seems certain. Indeed, many times in 2021, I wondered the very same thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But this is how The Two Towers <\/em>shapes the trilogy into the classic it is: Rohan becomes the absolute crux of hope in grief prevailing in spite of it all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rohan dons its grief, and through it, prevails.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Strength in grief<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tolkien knew grief quite well when he wrote The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. As he highlights in the introduction to the book, most of his closest friends were dead by 1918 because of war and plague. His mother died when he was young. His life was marked with tragedy, and so it is no accident that the characters in his world navigate grief as if it is its own kingdom. In the introduction to The Lord of the Rings, <\/em>Tolkien writes: \u201cOne has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tolkien is a contemporary of the Lost Generation of writers who, in the midst of war, plague, and loss, tended toward works steeped in disillusionment. But The Lord of the Rings <\/em>does something else. According to an article in <\/a>Polygon, <\/em>the trilogy has \u201can earnest belief that hope can coexist with despair, so long as we never surrender to it.\u201d The books dig even deeper into this idea, with the villain Sauron crafting the Dawnless Day in The Return of the King <\/em>in which he sends forth waves of impenetrable darkness, enveloping Middle-earth in gloom that the characters must march through nonetheless to buy Frodo time to destroy the Ring.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But before the Dawnless Day, before the flames of Mount Doom erupt in destruction and victory takes flight, is Helm\u2019s Deep and Rohan\u2019s own charge out of the fog of languishing. Rohan\u2019s victory is not because the characters march on to darkness and beat it: it\u2019s because they march on in spite of <\/em>darkness. Th\u00e9oden has no way of knowing there will be reinforcements when he charges the battlefield at Helm\u2019s Deep; he simply charges because he must. He realizes how perilous the hope is, and holds onto it nonetheless, and as the article in Polygon <\/em>points out, it is the combination of these small acts of defiance, these gambles for hope, that win the day. It is not blind<\/em> hopefulness: It is dogged<\/em> hopefulness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Two Towers <\/em>is the turning point for this idea of dogged hope, when grief turns to strength, and it is the perfect language to navigate a year like 2021, when so much has been lost, and so much forsaken.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For, 20 years after the trilogy was released, the world is indeed changed. And as I revisit the beloved films now, I am drawn more and more to Rohan because of this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I may not have experienced the same scale of loss as Tolkien, but I know what it feels to live as if under a shadow, dreaming of light. I don\u2019t know when international borders will open. I don\u2019t know when the pandemic will end. I only know that the lesser griefs, and all griefs, need their time to be mourned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And so it was I found myself, months after watching the films again in theaters and doing a deep dive into all things The Lord of the Rings, <\/em>returning like a long-misunderstood friend to Peter Jackson\u2019s The Two Towers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This time, alone in my apartment, I let the lack wash all over me in a way I hadn\u2019t before. When the Uruk-Hai quipped \u201cLooks like meat\u2019s back on the menu!\u201d I turned to a sister who was half a world away to share a knowing look she wouldn\u2019t see. When the Scandinavian fiddle played Edoras\u2019 theme, I remembered the violin recordings I had recently made for a funeral I likely wouldn\u2019t be able to attend. And when Th\u00e9oden turned to Aragorn and said \u201cWhat can Men do against such reckless hate?\u201d I reverberated in the despair and then the blistering euphoria as Aragorn responded: \u201cRide with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ride with me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of all moments in the now-20-year-old trilogy, this dogged hope encapsulates the defiance of all who have languished in 2021.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

May we all be Rohan, to wrath or ruin ere the red sun rises.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly 20 years ago, I sat in a theater in Minnesota, a wide-eyed prepubescent, taking in The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. In the years that followed, I would go on to watch the films until I could quote them in my sleep, reread the trilogy, and dress up as a…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[115,33],"tags":[146,39,155,138,153,38,154],"yoast_head":"\nHow We are Rohan - The Inkwell<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why \u2018The Two Towers\u2019 Is the Movie For 2021\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/inkwell.asia\/zh\/how-we-are-rohan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"zh_CN\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How We are Rohan - The Inkwell\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why \u2018The Two Towers\u2019 Is the Movie For 2021\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/inkwell.asia\/zh\/how-we-are-rohan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Inkwell\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-12-19T11:48:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-12-19T11:51:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/inkwell.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/ring-4612457_1280.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Hannah Lund\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"\u4f5c\u8005\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hannah Lund\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"\u9884\u8ba1\u9605\u8bfb\u65f6\u95f4\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7\u5206\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/inkwell.asia\/how-we-are-rohan\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/inkwell.asia\/how-we-are-rohan\/\",\"name\":\"How We are Rohan - 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