Progress on the Construction of the New East Wing

Folks have been asking for updates on the latest Farley family project. Tomorrow will be Lexington’s eighth consecutive snow day, and idle hands are up to the devil’s business…

From left to right, top to bottom… Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol… the Kitchen of Barad Dur, with Sauron, the Mouth of Sauron, and Gothmog in residence… the tower, including the Mouth of Sauron’s office… the Stone of Minas Morgul, now in Sauron’s throne room.

All of this needs to be completed before the Minas Tirith set is released in June. At that point I’ll need to figure out where in the condo to position both sets. For those of you who question the propriety of a fifty-one year old man devoting so much time and money to legos… well, I feel like successful completion of all of my responsibilities, including gainful employment, small business ownership, preparing two teenagers for college, and serving on the HOA board affords me the right to indulge in certain enthusiasms.

Barad Dur is a Tolkien location that we never actually visit for any significant time in the books, except at great distance. This makes it no less important a part of the story. As construction has progressed I’ve thought about the symbolic importance of the fortress to Sauron (this is the second Barad Dur, a reconstruction of the tower destroyed at the end of the Second Age, itself but a distant echo of Morgoth’s fortress of Angband). Bret Devereaux’s work on Lord of the Rings has made quite clear that while places and events are driven by the needs of the story, they are also far more grounded in a kind of reality than most readers appreciate. The Druedain, for example, exist because of the need to explain how the Rohirrim are able to approach Pelennor Fields unmolested, something that a commander as experienced and capable as the Witch King would never have allowed.

This means that Sauron must have felt some need to construct the largest fortress in Middle Earth in an area that was already a natural fortress, and then rebuild after it had been destroyed. My sense is that the tower exists only in part because of the need to fight Gondor and the Noldor; its real military and political importance is in providing a focus for the extension of Sauron’s power into the East and the South. We hear plenty about the dungeons below the tower but much less about who inhabits those dungeons… my guess is that Tolkien means to tell us that Sauron’s grip on the loyalty of the humans to the south and the east is limited and must be maintained with hostages and the constant threat of violence. I suspect the orcs also require a great deal of discipline.

Anyway, full pics when it’s done.