Today's action in Middle-earth is truly heartrending, isn't it? The realms of Rohan and Lothlorien are the victims of long-planned attacks, pawns in the big chess match. Aragorn, rightful king who has never sat on the throne, is wondering whether he will make it to Minas Tirith in time to save her. Yet perhaps the most heartrending encounters are the more personal: perhaps the coldest words in all of The Lord of the Rings are those of Denethor to his second son.

However, long after his masterpiece was published, Tolkien was asked by letter what part of it still moved him. He replied that it was today's scene, when Gollum finds Frodo and Sam asleep, Frodo's head pillowed on Sam.

"Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing."

But at a harsh word from Sam, the repentant moment is lost forever.