LOTR Rants | Mostly Aralas

a TTT scene by scene analysis of aralas, ig (pt2)

yall atp this isnt an essay its a whole novel 😭

enjoy and dont take everything unironically !! <3

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However, in the scene where the Three Hunters find those pyres of orc corpses, a black stain upon the far-stretching plains of Rohan, courtesy of Éomer's Rohirrim, Legolas' outlook upon death is notably different. In other scenes, the others were the first to fall to grief, while Legolas lingered behind, stoic and lacking a mortal understanding of death and mourning. But here, Legolas is the first to acknowledge that Merry and Pippin are most likely dead. He bows his head, a hand upon his heart, and whispers, "May they find peace in death" in Sindarin. Note how there is no subtitle for this moment, showing that this scene is very distinctly elvish and personal for Legolas, the idea of death, that these two hobbits that he had become so fond of are not coming back suddenly hitting him like a wrecking ball. Note also, though his piece of analysis might do better in the later part of this essay in which I will analyse the spoken Sindarin across the entirety of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, that Legolas says this line in his own, native Silvan dialect of Sindarin. Truly, not one single word of that sentence is in standard Sindarin, and the entirety of the sentence is strangely formed and pronounced, as it would be in the Silvan dialect. This also shows that it is a very personal moment for Legolas' character, reflecting in a twisted way his separateness from Aragorn and truly the rest of the Fellowship in Lórien after Gandalf's Fall in both the films, and, to some extent, the books. Notice how he says, "May they find peace in death" specifically, and no other prayer, showing that he does not truly know where men, or hobbits, in this case, go after death, and simply wishes them peace. This, paired with the distinct Silvan-ness of the phrase, could also be interpreted as presenring the sentence as a specifically Silvan prayer, one used by Legolas and his kin in Mirkwood over the bodies of dead Mirkwood soldiers, for the beliefs surrounding death and the afterlife are much looser, canonically, in Mirkwood than in any other elven realm. This shows that Legolas came to value Merry and Pippin enough as equals in this quest of theirs to speak this Silvan prayer over their dead bodies, or what is thought to be their dead bodies.

Moving on to Gandalf's rebirth, of which Legolas is the first to notice the encroaching sense, though, unlike Aragorn, he does not immediately chart it up to Saruman, and says only that the "White Wizard"approaches. He accepts Gandalf's rebirth the easiest out of the Company, and he is the first to kneel to the wizard. This shows that, unlike Aragorn and Gimli, he is familiar with the concept of rebirth, as this is an option available to elves in the afterlife.

Finally, during the attack of the Wargs, we see Legolas' ruthless fighting style in action once more, and the way he wades through the corpses of Rohirric soldiers as though they are no more than orcs. But he worries already for Aragorn, as shown in his leaning down near a dead body close to the edge of the cliff from which Aragorn fell, searching for the face of his king in the scattered corpses. This shows that he has familiarized himself with the concept of death enough to fear its coming for Aragorn as it came for Boromir. It may also be that he saw a scrap of Aragorn's clothes (how close would he have to be to Aragorn to recognize a scrap of his tattered, dirty tunic among piles of dead in a bloodstained field?) or a piece of his Song, essentially the soul of all beings upon Middle-earth, a thread in the tapestry of the great Music of Existence woven since the Beginning of Time. Elves are canonically more attuned to it than all other beings, so this is entirely possible. The following aggressivity of Legolas' "You lie!" to the face of the dying orc holding the Evenstar must also be noted, for we never see him this aggressive, and this may truly be the only flash of prolonged anger and hotheadedness we see in Legolas throughout the entire trilogy.