[Kuruharan]

davem

The 'shadow' is evil - her desire to die in battle, & he will provide her with the opportunity to achieve that desire. Is that what she loves in him - does she see him as heading inevitably for death? Is she so without hope that he symbolises an escape, the only escape?

Yes, I think so.

And is there something of that shadow about him?

I don’t believe so. I don’t think that Aragorn wanted to die. I believe he wanted to triumph. He was willing to die for the Cause, but I don’t think he wanted death for death’s sake. Eowyn, on the other hand, just wanted spectacular oblivion.

Is there something which strikes a chord in her?

Perhaps it is because Aragorn had a cause that he was willing to die for, and death was perhaps the most likely possibility. Maybe Eowyn confused this in her mind with a desire on Aragorn’s part for death. I think death for The Glorious Cause would have struck a cord.

Does she love him in the sense of wanting to live with him, or does she want to die with him? Is he her way to life, or to death?

(This thread is starting to get morbid.) Definitely death on both counts. Living just did not seem to be something she thought about very much.

Death does hang around Aragorn - literally in the Paths of the Dead. The dead serve him - is this the shadow she loves & recognises?

I don’t think so, at least beyond the fact that death hangs around any commander (which probably would have appealed to her in a way).

I would say that the Paths of the Dead were almost incidental to the whole issue, except to Eowyn they were culturally associated with certain death. By taking the Paths of the Dead, Aragorn may have (dare I use the term) “wedded” Eowyn’s concept of him and death more closely together.

Is it something Tolkien himself saw in the soldiers around him on the Somme, a false love of death, a desire to kill & be killed. Eowyn's great confrontation is with Death personified, & she doesn't seek to flle it, but to face it, even though the conflict seems hopeless, & death inevitable?

Erm…yes…well, that is rather awkward, at least so far as it relates to his experiences on the Somme.

Relating to Eowyn, I don’t think she saw it so much as a conflict but rather, as you put it earlier, an escape from drudgery and the thatched barn etc.

Morsul the Dark

i think he means that he reminds eowyn of theodred..... and she is merely hurt by the loss of her cousin so shes trying to fill the void

I doubt it. The love she felt for Theodred and the whatever it was she felt for Aragorn were two different things. She could have actually loved Theodred because she knew him, knew what he stood for, and so forth. With Aragorn, I believe that it was a longing for exotic places, deeds of daring do, almost a general sense of “otherness” (kind of a grass is always greener sort of thing) combined with a desire to have her innards scattered across the landscape in such a glorious fashion that the bards would mournfully sing of it for thousands of generations afterwards. She looked upon this as her escape from the cage of taking care of ailing kings (so boring). She thought of Aragorn as providing an avenue for that.