I'm not sure what the Ephel Duath are - Arquen has some notes around here on her take on their origins and geology. I agree they probably look pretty mean, meaner than the Pyrenees, for example. Spikier, sheerer, tumbled, and wreathed in black smoog.

However, I think Tolkien makes a huge effort to distinguish Ithilien from the Mountains of Shadow. The two are treated as unhappy neighbors, not part of the same landscape.

Where is the dividing line? Of course he does not want to make that clear... certainly the road Frodo is on, once it enters Ithilien, is not in the mountains or even their foothills, but rather in sloping, hilly country west of the mountains.

That is the Mediterranean landscape that I have been drawing our attention to. But unlike you, although I accept that Tolkien intends for it to be Mediterranean, and I think the chapter only makes sense with that understanding, I don't see how that kind of climate could really obtain there, southern latitude or not.

After all, look at the Middle-earth map. Henneth Annun is at the same latitude as Helms Deep and Edoras. Any word from Tolkien about the green shoots of spring piercing the wintry sod in Rohan, in Book 3 where we just spent some time? Any warm breezes from that Sea just West of Rohan? Northern Ithilien gets about as much exposure to the Sea from the Gap of Osgiliath as Rohan might from the Gap of Isen.

As I've said before, much of Middle-earth's geography and ecology is symbolic, if not actually magical. Ithilien is first cousin to Lorien as far as weather is concerned, and first cousin to the Shire as far as peace and nature is concerned.

Meanwhile: the Ephel Duath? They are the lineal descendants of the Mountains in The Silmarillion that guard Morgoth's realm -- spiders and all. I thought the film did a fantastic job of dolling up those NZ mountains with the alpine/CG equivalent of goth makeup.

But of course, just as there were no Fields of Pelennor about the film's Minas Tirith, so in the distance there is no hint of Ithilien in the foreground of those ominous, ominous black mountains!

Everyone is almost yielding to the desire to tell this grave young man, whose words seem so wise and fair, all that is in their minds. Join us in the Reading Room this week as we discuss Chapter 5 of Book IV in The Two Towers: "The Window on the West".