For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. The Return of the King, LoTR Book 6, Ch 2, The Land of Shadow
Actually it occurs to me now, as it has many times when reading Sam’s specific point of view in Mordor, that this is one of the most revelatory passages in regards to the point of many of the other narratives within LotR. And honestly I say this as both praise and scorn. Because yes, this is a beautiful passage, and it’s language inspires almost unheeding of it’s specific meaning. The high beauty and passing shadow means as many things as the number of people that read of them.
But I’m afraid I will once again make this about christian religion AND Denethor AND Boromir so sorry. (not really)
Here, defiance is framed as selfish. When Sam is exhausted at the top of the tower of Cirith Ungol, hopelessly lost, surrounded by death and darkness, he sings just for the sake of adding something beautiful into that terrible place. He is defying the darkness around him. But, as this passage tells us, this is apparently not an un-complicatedly good or even neutral act. Instead, Sam should not have even worried for the darkness to begin with. His fate, and the fate of the things he loves, should not have troubled him, because in the face of the untouchable light and high beauty, none of it really matters apparently.
Obviously in this universe high and beautiful things and celestial lights are holy, they are divine, so the meaning is clear; ‘No matter what happens to you, so long as Eru is on his throne, nothing is wrong with the world and you should not even begrudge the pain and suffering levied upon you and your loved ones, it will all turn out right in the end.’
This is a very Christian sentiment and it spotlights the specific ‘sin’ Denethor AND Boromir are committing within the morality of the books. Because Denethor and Boromir are concerned with the things they love and their suffering. Boromir himself is apathetic about the high beauty and Eru’s rightness and elves and the divine blood he and Aragorn carry. His whole motive is to protect his people, he does not care about whether the actions he takes in their defense could be considered a challenge or an affront to Eru (as the Ring is an instrument by which Sauron seeks to challenge Eru’s divine right to the throne of the world, and therefore using it is inherently blasphemous.) To Boromir, if he is working towards the safety of his city, his people, his family, then he is content that he is serving as he should be. Boromir is, in essentials, the agnostic of this story.
Denethor, on the other hand, DOES have a relationship with this high beauty, albeit a very complex one. He has loved the divine light, he is a member of the faithful, he has kept to their ways and loved as they have loved his whole life. He is even much more circumspect about using the Ring as well, favouring just keeping it safe and out of Saurons hands. He wants to be good. And that has destroyed him. It has taken all things he has ever loved from him, this eternal defence and embattlement against The One Who Would Be God to champion Eru. Boromir literally died on a quest because of a divinely ordained dream, his son! And here is Gandalf, the closest thing to an angel middle-earth has, a divine messenger, here to tell him what else he has to sacrifice and how he mustn’t begrudge Boromir’s loss anyway.
Denethor is ultimately defiant against the darkness, he wants to protect his people, he oversees everything from the large to the small, he barely sleeps, he has dauntless will and resolve to protect Gondor and it is because of him that Gondor survives at all. But to the narrative, that is still a selfish motive. In the end the only thing he can think of to save himself and the son he loves from more suffering is to die. But suicide is a sin, Denethor ‘does not have the authority to order the hour of his own death’ as Gandalf says. It is another blasphemous act, because Denethor has LOST faith, one might say he has lost the perspective of the high beauty and his own insignificance. Denethor in fact now believes that the lives and peace of his sons ARE more important to him than God. So Denethor represents a man who, through the trials of the world, LOSES faith.
And then there is Faramir, THE faithful one. He is the one his family must be compared too, caring for his people to an extent, but firmly reinforcing the fact that, ‘I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory.’ A sentiment he reinforces when Denethor challenges him about it, ‘Ever your desire is to appear lordly and generous as a king of old, gracious, gentle. That may well befit one of high race, if he sits in power and peace. But in desperate hours gentleness may be repaid with death.’ [-] ‘But not with your death only, Lord Faramir: with the death also of your father, and of all your people, whom it is your part to protect now that Boromir is gone.’ And Faramir says ‘so be it’, Faramir loves God more than he loves his people or his family, he is willing to let all of them suffer and die in order to keep faith with Him, and the story rewards him for it with the life and peace his brother and father were never allowed.
And technically both Denethor and Boromir as apostates are treated quite gently and sympathetically by the narrative in comparison to much christian dogma. Boromir and Denethor are still allowed their nobility and valour and good intentions, but in the end they are pitiable figures to the wider morality of the tale. They have loved people too much and God too little and through it have lost that perspective that the faithful believe is necessary to pass through the world properly. Neither of them could lie down and let ‘for a moment, their own fate, and even their loved one’s, cease to trouble them’.
And that! Is literally why they’re my favourite characters, I too love people more than God, even in the face of a fathomless eternity. If I were given the choice to save people from terrible suffering in their short lives at the cost of defying God’s right to the throne of the world, I would also take it. Mutable things that do not last are just as divinely important as eternity. I will not wait till I’m dead to give my full love to things and neither did Denethor or Boromir!!!
