Sorry, Reverend, I can't keep up.

1.  Again, can you remember your first reaction to this scene? "Gandalf, Noooo!" And that was long before the movie.

2.  Now is the time to assess the entire action sequence as a literary work.  Go back over the chapter and comment on it as a piece of writing.  Does it accomplish the writer’s purpose?  Does it engadge the reader?  How does it succeed of fail?
Definitely worked for me. I felt like I was there with the Fellowship, watching my leader fall.

3.  Note the curious puncuation of the ‘He staggared’ line.  It is very deliberately chopped into four separate bits, rendering the moment into slow motion.  How’s that for effective writing (I know we have English teachers out there).
I'm not an English teacher, professional writer or editor, but see my answer to #2.

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Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shpes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons--'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
We make still by the law in which we're made!