Henneth Annûn Story Archive

>>Note also, in the conversations between Aragorn and Éowyn in The Passing of the Grey Company,  he uses "you" or "your" in addressing her, that is, polite usage, while she uses the intimate "thou" and "thee".  Aragorn keeps her linguistically at arm's length, and she's trying to get closer to him.

This is so very interesting - I knew of the distinction between the words, but I'd never really looked at these passages in that context.  I think it partly fails to impress itself upon us because we know 'thee' and 'thou' only in an archaic sense.  Even when we know, objectively, that these are familiar rather than polite terms, our brains insist upon understanding them as polite because of the context in which we've seen them used.  (I think it seems a bit strange to people these days that the *familiar* form of 'you' would be used to address a deity.)

erunyauve wrote:

This is so very interesting - I knew of the distinction between the words, but I'd never really looked at these passages in that context.  I think it partly fails to impress itself upon us because we know 'thee' and 'thou' only in an archaic sense.  Even when we know, objectively, that these are familiar rather than polite terms, our brains insist upon understanding them as polite because of the context in which we've seen them used.  (I think it seems a bit strange to people these days that the *familiar* form of 'you' would be used to address a deity.)

Thanks, erunyauve!

Though I've read LOTR more times than I can count, I didn't pick up on this conciously until I analyzed it for this essay.  Then I went, "Oh, that's why I get this squicky feeling--I'm watching Éowyn basically humiliate before Aragorn."

Thanks for reading & commenting!