Chapter 7: The Pyre of Denethor

Jacob's Thoughts (11/25/16)

As near as I can tell, the sin of Denethor is two-fold.  First and most obvious is Pride, particularly his arrogance in attempting to wield one of the Palantirs; as Gandalf succinctly glosses it:

"In the days of his wisdom Denethor did not presume to use it, nor to challenge Sauron, knowing the limits of his own strength.  But his wisdom failed; and I fear that as the peril of his realm grew he looked in the Stone and was deceived...He was too great to be subdued to the will of the Dark Power, he saw nonetheless only those things that Power permitted him to see...the vision of the great might of Mordor that was shown to him fed the despair of his heart until it overthrew his mind" (161).

Apparently, Denethor was the first victim of psychological warfare; Sauron knew he needn't convert Denethor as he did Saruman, only demoralize him, which he effects by presenting a wide-array of cherry-picked intell calculated to convince Denethor of the futility of fighting, infecting him with defeatism and despair. Like Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," Denethor has been tricked into thinking he resists the Devil in the very moment that he succumbs to him.

Denethor in his pride thought he could match wills with the Dark Lord, but failed; what's more, his pride (like all pride) was fueled primarily by fear--for he had always known better than to look into the Palantir, but his nerves in the end got the best of him.  There are a number of moralistic lessons to be gleaned from this passage, viz: pessimism is a greater enemy than armies; know your limits; never do anything out of fear; question your sources; etc. and etc.   Maybe (just for kicks and giggles) we can even consider Denethor's fall as a parable about the need to get off the internet, reading the Palantir as a forerunner to the social-media echo-chambers that keep us trapped in our own rage-fueled, paranoid myopias and so forth.

But Pride is only one component of the sin of Denethor, and I think the bigger reason why he succumbs to despair is actually highlighted just a few pages earlier, when Gandalf demands of him, "What then would you have...if your will could have its way?"

Almost petulantly, Denethor answers, "I would have things as they were in all the days of my life...and in the days of my long-fathers before me..."  (158).  At the risk of politicizing a tad here, Denethor wants to Make Gondor Great Again--he wants things back to how he imagines they always used to be, and probably never were.  We are not privy to what exactly Sauron showed Denethor in the Palantir, but I have my suspicions that it wasn't just the military might of Mordor that shock-and-awed the Steward of Gondor into submission: I think Sauron also showed Denethor a world wherein he doesn't matter anymore.  A changed world, one where there is no need for Stewards or rival realms or what have you, where his entire "way of life" (to borrow a Bushism) is rendered irrelevant.

I suspect that it wasn't just the rise of Mordor or even the threat to Gondor that most shook Denethor, but simply the realization that the world was never going to go back to the way it was.  Even if Mordor is totally defeated, Middle-Earth is still going to be fundamentally different from how it was, and it is this fact that proud Denethor cannot abide.  Whether Sauron or Aragorn comes out on top, in either case Denethor does not, and so he throws a fit like it's the end of the world, because it is the end of his privileged little world.  It is not just change for the worse, but any change whatsoever that most frightens him--and like many a voter last Election Day, he has lashed out against the changing face of the world in the most self-destructive ways possible.

Ben's Thoughts (12/19/16)

I don't know if I have too much more to say about Denethor. His final decision is chilling, but it feels all too real. Here is a man whose life, as he has lived it up to that point, has no place in the changing world. Either Gondor is defeated by Sauron, and he and his city is destroyed, or the West triumphs over the Enemy, and Aragorn supplants him. He is unwilling to change, or perhaps unable to change perspective. He has been perpetually poisoned by Sauron's propaganda, a process that was no doubt accelerated since the death of Boromir, and he is left with the terrible conclusion that the only other option is destruction.

Gandalf wisely points out that "it would not seem that a Steward who faithfully surrenders his charge is diminished in love or in honour," but the problem is that Denethor does not see himself as a Steward; he sees himself as a king. He is a man that thanks to his birth, lineage, and circumstances of fate that occurred many hundreds of years prior, answers to no one. I think we would all like to say to ourselves that in the same circumstance, we would gladly abdicate to Aragorn (as Faramir, we will see, actually does in Book VI), but the temptation to think as Denethor does is probably all to real for most of us. It's not easy to give up power, to accept that we must change or be nullified, or to cede control to others in the face of great danger.

Unfortunately in these situations where we feel our control slipping, it's all too easy to jump to unwarranted conclusions, breeding anger and even paranoia. Of Gandalf, Denethor says that he has "read thy mind and its policies," and that:
Thy hope is to rule in my stead, to stand behind every throne, north, south, or west. . . . Do I not know that you commanded this halfling here to keep silence? That you brought him hither to be a spy within my very chamber? And yet in our speech together I have learned the names and purpose of all thy companions.
We know, from long experience with Gandalf, that his purpose is not to rule, nor to "supplant" Denethor with Aragorn. Additionally, we know that the "purpose" of each member of the Fellowship is benevolent and, at least initially, was bent towards assisting Frodo and the destruction of the Ring. Certainly, Gandalf did command Pippin to be silent about Aragorn and his ultimate kingly destiny. But it is Denethor, in his frustration, that fills in the blanks there with malevolent intent. How hastily we jump to conclusions when we feel like others are being duplicitous with us. Denethor was unwilling to consider the fact that it was he who was the problem, not Gandalf or Aragorn.

And in Denethor's mind, I'm sure it was all to easy to rationalize his fear towards Aragorn: he came from a line of failed kings, whose kingdom in Arnor was destroyed over a thousand years before. Likewise, the Gondorian line had failed; the stewards had stepped in to guide the kingdom in the absence of the line of Elendil. In his mind, why should he bow to such a person? What he did not know was that Boromir, initially just as skeptical as his father about Aragorn's legitimacy, was won over by Aragorn's character and ability. Denethor refuses to give Aragorn that chance.

Fear, jumping to conclusions, inability and unwillingness to change behavior and perspective, rationalization -- these sound like very human foibles indeed. A tragic end to a compelling character.

Eric's Thoughts (3/27/17)

Is Denethor a villain? I think so.Certainly he's not your typical evil lord lurking in a tower. But let's look at the facts.

Sacrifice your son for no reason at all by sending him into a pointless battle just to prove that you can? Then try to cremate him alive? Check.

Refuse to acknowledge the rightful heir to Gondor? Check.

Just plain creepy? Double check.

Of course, what makes the ignition of Denethor so tragic is that the reader realizes, right before the end, his creepiness wasn't entirely his fault. Turns out, Denethor had been watching Sauron News all along.

Of course, while Denethor would not be a man I would like to spend time around in real life, as literary fiction, he's one of LOTR's best characters. The reader can tell he WANTS to be good. He does try. After all, he's the last bulwark between the free world and ultimate tyranny. His cause is righteous.

The real tragedy is that the enigma is unanswerable. We have no pre-palantir Denethor and post-palantir Denethor to compare. Alas, the reader is only left to wonder what kind of man he might have been if circumstances were different.

No comments:

Post a Comment