The Lord of the Rings, Book 5, part 2 (chapters 6-10)
On Monday, October 5th, 2026 Jackie Sheppard presented Reading the Return of the King covering chapters 6 to 10 in Book 5, Part 2 of the Lord of the Rings for the Big Read’s fourteenth session.
The presentation was recorded and Jackie was on hand for live Q & A. Approximately thirty people attended the session. I cut off after the Q & A as it was 10 pm where I live, and as it was a Monday night, decided not to stay on later in the event they did the break-out portion.
I enjoyed her discussion of diegesis, which I learned was how the characters and people living in the story know events to be happening. She used this in addressing how Aragorn was accepted as the King as opposed to how the reader perceives him as being accepted.
First she dispelled that the people acknowledged his right by birth or by sword. They as opposed to the reader, didn’t have the knowledge required. Outside the city on the battlefield there were those who would have recognized the banner, such Eomer, but not the people of the city.
For the people, it boiled down to Ioreth who used the folk knowledge and wisdom of old wives tales to recall the hands of the healer were the hands of the king, along with the kingsfoil. She also was witness to Faramir awaking and calling Aragorn, King. She tied it together, pronounced it to a friend, and word began to spread as this man with the green stone came and went healing. They chose to call him Elfstone.
She also noted the stone arriving from Galadriel and the standard that Arwen had sown and how those objects also played significant roles in his being accepted and recognized by the people as opposed to proclaiming himself to be King.
Overall very nice job. In the Q & A she did delve deeper into the role of Arwen and how her ‘off the page’ role was more significant to the story than a casual reader may grasp, largely in part to the standard she made and the role it played.
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