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Originally Posted by HBP  Its so unfortunate that i haven't read the books..... i am assuming there is a lot more to it than the movie depicts. Anyway can someone plz tell me what is meant by the "scouring of the shire".............is it scouring as in "scouring". And was there really a confrontation between Gandalf and the Witch King. |
Yes, there is a confrontation between Gandalf and the Witch King, which takes place just before the horns of the Rohirrim are heard... it is their arrival (along with Aragorn's forces in the ships of the Black Corsairs) that halts the confrontation... and Gandalf very well may not have been able to defeat the Witch King, incidentally.
As for the Scouring of the Shire... briefly, when the hobbits return to the Shire, they find conditions horribly changed. If you recall the image Frodo sees in the mirror of Galadriel of the Shire-folk enslaved, etc.... that is a part of it. Saruman did not die quite as presented in the film, but went (with Wormtongue) to the Shire to "work a little mischief"... destroying the peace and security of the Shire and turning it into a miniature of what he'd done to Isengard.
The point is that it was the hobbits' involvement with the greater events in the world outside (from which they had long isolated themselves) that allowed them to grow enough to confront this situation and save their own homeland; without that, the companions would have also been enslaved... and, even had the Ring been destroyed, Sauron's influence would have destroyed the Shire indirectly by its effect on and through Saruman. The "scouring", therefore, refers to the cleansing of the Shire of this blight of the Shadow, as well as the scouring away of (at least a part of) their innocence and insularity, as the hobbits once again become a part of the greater world (albeit still rather shy of being involved with the Big Folk) under the reigns of Elessar (Aragorn) and his heirs.